Beamdog Responds to Criticism For Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear

The developers of the first Baldur’s Gate expansion Siege of Dragonspear, Beamdog, recently responded to fan criticism in their forums.

Much of this criticism was sent by fans angry about the inclusion and writing of a minor transgender character, Mizhena, who fans felt was included due to “political correctness” among other reasons. Other problems voiced by players on the Steam page and GOG include corrupted saves, many bugs, and bad writing.

Speaking on the Beamdog forums, the company CEO Trent Oster responded to complaints:

“We’ve received feedback around Mizhena, a supporting character who reveals she is transgender. In retrospect, it would have been better served if we had introduced a transgender character with more development. This is a lesson we will be carrying forward in our development as creators and we will be improving this character in a future update.”

Oster also responded to fans who directed their complaints towards the staff at Beamdog when he noted that:

“While we appreciate all feedback we receive from our fans, both positive as well as negative, some of the negative feedback has focused not on Siege of Dragonspear but on individual developers at Beamdog — to the point of online threats and harassment.

“I just want to make it crystal clear that Beamdog does not condone this behavior, and moreover that it will not have the desired effect as we stand behind all our developers 100%. We created the game as a group, and moving forward we’ll work on the game’s issues as a group, which I believe is exactly as it should be.”

Beamdog also announced that they will continue to update Siege of Dragonspear and that the next update will include fixing issues found in multiplayer and removing a line of dialog that caused controversy.